About Me

Medical Robotics Magazine is the world's first and only commercial feature news magazine devoted to all aspect of the medical robotics industry- including robotic surgery, physical therapy robots, hospital orderlies, and other topics related to robotic medicine.
As a feature magazine, Medical Robotics features interviews, business news, conference coverage and editorials, as well as a generous portion of articles written by noteworthy robotics surgeons as well as clinical trials reports.
MR has been on-line since 2007, and first appeared in print in January of 2008 at the annual meeting of MIRA (the Minimally Invasive Robotics Association) in Rome, Italy. Medical Robotics Magazine is copyrighted, features a nascent Board of Editorial Advisors, and is indexed by the U.S. Library of Congress.
All contents (c) 2011 John J. Otrompke, JD
Contact: John J. Otrompke, JD
John_Otrompke@yahoo.com
646-730-0179

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Light-Weight Robot Unveiled at AUTOMATE May be Used in Medical-Surgical Applications

By John Otrompke

March 23- Chicago

A robot newly unveiled in the United States by KUKA Robotics Corporation, which makes the robotic component of Accuray’s Cyberknife device, is being explored for use in a new surgical design by Titan Medical, out of Canada, according to James Cooper, vice president of sales and marketing for KUKA.

The light-weight system, referred to as the KR5 Sixx in technical literature, was already introduced in the European marketplace in 2010, but the current AUTOMATE show in Chicago was the first time the robot was exhibited in North America, Cooper added.

“The difference with our light-weight model is that has torque feedback in all the joints,” said Corey Ryan, account manager for KUKA. “All the electronics are inside the robot, whereas with the other ones, the electronics are in a cabinet far away. This robot has variable stiffness and active dampening, which means that if you push on it, you can get it to move a little, or a lot,” he explained.

The new system is better than the current Cyberknife system, according to Ryan. “With the Cyberknife, you have to have the patient immobilized, and the robot has to know their exact position. Here, the robot can find its way, and know if it touches a person . If you set up a force perimeter, it will know it touches something m ore solid,” he added.